1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital camera with a plurality of media for recording captured images, and an image recording system.
2. Description of the Background Art
General digital cameras are configured to be able to load a removable recording medium for recording and storing captured images. Recently, in order to increase the number of captured images that can be recorded, digital cameras with two card slots which can load two recording media are being prepared for the market.
In photographing a subject, a user selects, for example by operation of a changeover switch, one recording medium on which images are recorded out of those loaded in first and second slots; therefore, images obtained through photographing are recorded on the selected recording medium. That is, conventional digital cameras are configured to record captured images on a user-selected recording medium.
Conventionally, the dominating removable recording media for such digital cameras have been memory cards composed of semiconductor memory and the like, but magnetic disk cards each comprising a built-in magnetic disk device with high recording capacity are also being used in recent years.
For recording of captured images on a magnetic disk card, however, a predetermined starting time is necessary after activation of the magnetic disk card is started before captured images can be recorded. Thus, a captured image obtained in response to a photographing operation cannot be recorded immediately. When the digital camera is configured to start the activation of a magnetic disk card after a user's release operation for photographing, recording of captured images is not allowed during a period of time required for the activation and thus the next release operation is disabled. Accordingly, continuous photographing or the like becomes impossible.
Here, the magnetic disk card may always be placed in the active state to be able to record captured images all the time; however, such a configuration raises new problems about endurance of and power consumption in the magnetic disk card and thus it is not easily adaptable to transportable digital cameras.
Even if only one of two recording media which can be loaded in a digital camera is a magnetic disk card, the same problems as above described arise when a user selects the magnetic disk card as a subject of recording of captured images.
When not only the magnetic disk card but also any one of two recording media selected as a subject of recording is temporarily unusable because of being processed (e.g., being formatted), the recording of captured images is not allowed until that process is completed, and therefore the user's release operation is disabled.
To prevent the release operation from being disabled, a large-capacity buffer memory for temporarily recording a large number of captured images may be built in a digital camera on the precedent stage of a recording medium selected as a subject of recording. This, however, brings up another problem of increasing the product cost of digital cameras.
Although some digital cameras are provided with an interface for establishing a connection with external equipment (e.g., a printer or another digital camera), conventional digital cameras can only selectively perform either a photographing operation, or image data communications with the external equipment. Thus, the user's release operation is disabled during data communications with the external equipment.
The aforementioned problems result from the fact that even with a digital camera loading two recording media, only one user-selected recording medium is always to be accessed for recording or the like.